What Parts of Linux Audio Simply Work Great? (was Re: [linux-audio-dev] Best-performing Linux-friendly MIDI interfaces?)

[Christoph Eckert]

> What's the current "coding standard" for consumer audio
> apps that should work in both
> KDE and GNOME enviroments ? Use ALSA directly, support both
> artsd/esd etc ?

that's the problem. Currently there's no "standard", but 
creating one would simplify life a lot for developers of any 
kind of audio output as well as for the BOING.WAV users.

Currently a developer who wants to make an application 
straightforward needed various output plugins (OSS & ALSA 
direct access, esd, arts, gstreamer and JACK). Then an 
autodetection needed to be added which checks for the most 
suitable output plugin. No developer will do this, because 
it's very much work.

BTW: For me ALSA direct access (and therefore blocking the 
device) seems to be a bit ugly for a multitasking and multi 
user operating system like linux is. Is ALSA direct access 
really an option (regardless that DMIX can help with this)?
An desktop independent soundserver available on each linux 
machine could help a lot. JACK could be a possible solution.

> I hate fragmentation and I think there should be only one
> audio server for consumer apps
> even if it's decoupled from jack (eg artsd that can output
> either to ALSA or to jack)

As soon as there was an auto detection, OK. But still I'd 
prefer a common soundserver for all applications and window 
managers.

> but the question is who is going to give up their audio
> server for the competition.
> (eg gnome using arts) or do you think KDE and GNOME will
> over time agree to a common
> consumer audio server ? (eg this polypaudio)

arts will soon be dropped and AFAIK both major desktops are 
looking for a common replacement. Gstreamer is one of the 
candidates.



Best regards


    ce